2012: A Graphical Look At The Year In Crime Fighting

In today’s Monday Musings, we will look at the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s provisional statistics for the year ending 2012. We would wait on official statistics but the website still lists provisional statistics for 2011. Regardless, here is 2012 in a pictorial form:

Source: Jamaica Constabulary Force

We must say congratulations to the police force as murders have fallen from a mind-numbing 1,683 or more than 32 Jamaicans per week in 2009 to the still ridiculously high figure of 1,087 or almost 21 Jamaicans per week. This represents a 35% drop in murders in 3 years. However, from 2011 to 2012 we saw only a 4% drop in murders. 21 Jamaicans a week or 3 Jamaicans a day is still ridiculously high for a nation that wants to label itself as developed within two decades of today’s date.

An interesting statistic is the number of fatal police shootings. Even though the police fatally shot 280 people in 2011, there was only a 4% decline in the murder rate.

Why were so many people murdered? Let’s look at the graphic below:

Source: Jamaica Constabulary Force

In 2012, the number one reason seems to be gang related. When compared to 2011, it seems that gang related murders have re-emerged after falling dramatically in 2010.

What were Jamaicans murdered with? Most everyone knows the answer already: The Gun. Let’s look at the graphic:

Source: Jamaica Constabulary Force

Unfortunately, that one was too easy.

Next question, which parish had the most murders? Easy again right, must be Kingston, St. Andrew or somewhere like that. That’s where the most people are. Well let’s ask the question, which parish had the largest percentage increase in murders and the largest percentage decrease in murders from 2011 to 2012? Let’s go to the charts:

Source: Jamaica Constabulary Force

Ok. So you were right: Kingston, St. Andrew, St. James and St. Catherine had the most murders in both 2012 and 2011. However, which parish had the greatest percentage increase and decrease? How about a table:

Source: Jamaica Constabulary Force

Hanover had a whopping 140% increase in murders while St. Thomas had a very respectable 38% decrease in murders. The best performer award should go to St. Catherine though. That parish’s murder % went down by 28%, just being beaten by St. Thomas, but in terms of number of murders, St. Catherine had 85 less murders in 2012 versus 14 less for St. Thomas.

Last question: Which parish has the highest murder rate in Jamaica? Which parish has the lowest murder rate? You should have a good idea by now, but lets look at the chart anyway:

Source: Jamaica Constabulary Force

Looking at the 2012 graph on the right, the answers are: Kingston has the highest murder rate, while Portland has the lowest murder rate. In order of highest to lowest: